Hello Botball community! My name is Alexander Nabavi-Noori, and I was an acting YAC member last year. Today I am here to release into the wild a really cool project that I, and my friend James Linnell worked on in our spare time last year. Its called the iPhone Create Controller. This was going to be a paper we were going to submit, but as all engineers know: shift happens.

Even the most sophisticated servo-powered scoring devices are only effective when the robot can accurately manuever itself into scoring range. Though you can move your robot using fd()s and bk()s, to accurately travel at precise distances and speeds, its better to use something called closed loop motor control.

Whenever, you make a robot mechanism, you almost always need a power source. Whether it is motors, servos, rubber bands, or controlled gravity. In many instances, the simple output of the power source must be 'modified" or "moved" in order to accomplish a task (claw, bin, arm, self destruct switch). In this article, I will be discussing how you can do this is through gears and chains.

When designing a claw to pick up the large foam balls, two key points need to be considered; stability, and weight. The claw does not need to be complex to complete its task, but the more advanced teams can get creative and have very unique designs.